Now, we’ll turn to the most important local election that very few are paying attention to. Last year, Kamala Harris was elected to statewide office, which meant leaving her post as San Francisco’s district attorney. That caused outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom to do something unprecedented: he appointed his police chief to replace her. Now, to defend his seat, District Attorney George Gascon will have to fend off four competitors. KALW’s Ben Trefny spoke with criminal justice editor, Rina Palta to discuss the candidates.

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BEN TREFNY: So Rina, why is this race so important?

RINA PALTA: People have a vague idea of what a district attorney does: prosecuting crimes. But also, the district attorney basically makes criminal justice policy for the county they’re in. So it’s up to the DA what sorts of crimes get punished and to some degree, with what sanctions. The district attorney decides, for instance, whether to ask for the death penalty if someone’s accused of murder.

TREFNY: So in November we’ve got five candidates in the race and we’ll be hearing excerpts of interviews from all of them shortly. This is the first really competitive election for this position that San Francisco has had since Kamala Harris was first elected back in 2003. What are the big issues that you see at stake?

PALTA: As with any election, especially one like this, where ranked choice voting is forcing candidates to band together and form strategic alliances, there are a number of dominating themes. And I’ll let one of the candidates, David Onek, introduce the first one. Onek is a member of the Bay Area’s robust criminal justice reform community and has worked for a number of organizations, like Walden House and the Haywood Burns Institute, and was also a member of the San Francisco Police Commission.

DAVID ONEK: Our criminal justice system is completely broken. We are spending so much on corrections in this state, on incarceration, that we virtually bankrupt the state of California and we’re unable to pay for all the services that would actually make us safer, like more cops, community policing on the street, like more teachers in our schools, and more services in our communities.

PALTA: At the moment, Onek is the founding director of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, and he’s been working to reform the criminal justice system for twenty years. And in this race, he’s the changer, the guy who wants to step in and make San Francisco a national model, a kind of experiment in how you can do things differently with crime and punishment.

TREFNY: That sounds great in theory, but what would David Onek actually do to overhaul the criminal justice system?

PALTA: That’s what I asked Onek. Here’s what he said.

ONEK: So let’s talk about drugs for a minute. The War on Drugs has been a complete failure. The Onion had a great line a few years ago, before it became more popular, which said “Drugs Win Drug War.” And I think that really sums up where we are with the War on Drugs. Nobody can say it’s working. We need to do something different. And I absolutely will not be incarcerating people for low-level possession of drugs. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s wasting precious prison resources that should be going to serious and violent offenders. We need to provide treatment to folks who need it. We need to provide services for those with mental health needs and help people stay on the right path.

PALTA (To David Onek): So day one, coming into office, looking at your caseload, talking to your prosecutors, do you – without these kinds of programs in place already, because they exist to some degree, but not nearly to the degree that would be necessary, do you say we’re not prosecuting this, we’re just going to dismiss this or we’re going to put this person on probation?

ONEK: Well, we do have excellent community-based programs in San Francisco. I think the programs are there. We need to make sure that they do receive additional funding, as we have more offenders coming back to the county level under realignment. Both for the law enforcement and supervision side and for the community side. And so I will absolutely fight for that and we need to capture savings that are made by reducing our prison population – of course some of those savings are going to go to deficit reduction – but we need to capture a portion of those savings, what other states call “justice reinvestment,” and make sure that it’s reinvested at the community level.

TREFNY: That was district attorney candidate David Onek talking about what his priorities would be if elected to San Francisco’s top law enforcement spot. You’re listening to Crosscurrents. I’m Ben Trefny, and we’ll be hearing from all of San Francisco’s DA candidates today. I’m here with KALW’s criminal justice editor, Rina Palta. So Rina, if Onek is “the reformer” candidate, where does someone like Sharmin Bock, who’s a career prosecutor, stand?

PALTA: Everyone in this race is positioning themselves as a reformer, which if you know anything about most district attorneys races, is pretty unique to San Francisco’s political environment. Now candidate Sharmin Bock is, like you said, a career prosecutor who currently is an assistant DA in Alameda County. And she’s best known for her work going after child sex traffickers in Oakland. She’s the only woman in this race, something that’s probably going to help her at the polls, and she’s one of two experienced prosecutors running to be San Francisco’s top prosecutor. All the pieces are really in place for her.

TREFNY: Except that she’s not the incumbent.

PALTA: True, and the question is whether she lives and breathes San Francisco values, like a commitment to rehabilitation instead of prison, and life in prison instead of the death penalty for murder – things that are generally important to San Francisco voters, but are treated differently in the slightly more “tough on crime” Alameda County, where Bock has spent most of her career. When I interviewed Bock, I asked her if she was too steeped in the criminal justice system to be able to step back and look at its flaws and find innovative solutions. And here’s what Bock said about her capacity to make reform.

SHARMIN BOCK: You know, I think I’m the only one who actually has a track record of having done exactly that within the DA’s office. So you look at, in early 2000, nobody saw the child sex trafficking issue on the horizon. I saw it on the horizon. Not only did I see it on the horizon, but I have fought ever since to divert the girls who are exploited away from criminalization towards rescue. And also ensuring accountability for the traffickers. So I’m not just talking the talk, I’ve actually walked the talk. I’ve walked the talk and I’ve received national recognition for it.

PALTA (To Sharmin Bock): What concerns are specific to San Francisco and what do you think is unique about this city that you would need to tackle as the DA here?

BOCK: So I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 40 years. I moved here when I was 4 and I’m 49, and I’ve been in Alameda County as a prosecutor for 22 years. The concerns that really seem at the forefront in everyone’s minds today, I think first and foremost, there’s a crisis of confidence in our leadership. What does that mean? That means we have over 1,000 unsolved murders and over 900 unsolved rapes in our crime lab that haven’t even entered the system. That is actually scary because those cases just sitting on the shelf, collecting dust, means that the perpetrators are amongst us. And the primary responsibility of the DA has to be achieving justice for victims of violent crime. Keeping the community safe for our most violent and dangerous criminals. You can’t get there if you have a DNA crime lab in crisis, you can’t get there if you have a DA who’s a political appointee who, at every step of the way, instead of fixing the problem, has been covering the problem up.

TREFNY: That was San Francisco district attorney candidate Sharmin Bock talking about her policy priorities and criticisms of the current administration. This is Crosscurrents from KALW News, and we’re here with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta, talking about the pluses and minuses of each candidate. Which brings us to our incumbent, George Gascon. Bock is very critical of him. He’s the incumbent, the presumed frontrunner, so challengers are bound to be critical of that person. We’ll get back to this issue of the DNA lab in a minute. But first, Rina, can you give us some background on Gascon?

PALTA: Well, Gascon is a man who’s been a leader in the criminal justice system for a long time. First, moving up through the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department to become second in command, and then as the police chief in Mesa, Arizona.

TREFNY: I actually first heard of him because he played a big role in standing up for immigrant rights down there in Arizona.

PALTA: Exactly, Gascon spent his time in Arizona playing foil, basically to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who basically has taken it upon himself to crack down on illegal immigration in Arizona. And Gascon very publicly opposed Arpaio, didn’t go along with his brand of law enforcement, and testified against his actions in Congress. And that helped Gascon become so widely respected as a law enforcement officer, and it helped him get his position here as chief of police in San Francisco. The question is whether he’s now in the wrong place as district attorney, and that’s an issue his opponents are really beating on. Does this former police chief have the independence and ability to handle things like investigating and possibly charging police misconduct? Or conducting an open review of the DNA lab? Just as a refresher, there was a scandal involving the city’s crime lab a few years back, which led to the drug portion being shut down. Now, there’s a question as to whether the lab that processes DNA could also be compromised. I asked Gascon about that and here’s what he said.

GEORGE GASCON: So first of all, I think it’s really important and my opponents and I do not talk about this, most of the problems that originated with the crime lab preceded me. I came here as the chief of police, actually I was brought here to work on a lot of problems here that have been here for years. When I became aware of the problems with the crime lab, within, actually less than five hours from the time I became aware of the crime lab problem, I did a press conference, brought the public in, talked about it. I did a first level of analysis and determined that controlled substances was the major problem. We shut that down. I called the Justice Department and asked the Justice Department to come in and do an investigation and I called the DA’s office. There were some problems, but the DNA lab was working fine. There were some areas where we had problems with some of the protocols and those protocols were fixed.

PALTA (To George Gason): So let’s move on to the other issue I wanted to talk to you about and that is police oversight. Obviously there’s been some scandals with some possible misconduct on the part of undercover officers. There’s also been ongoing issues in San Francisco about Robbery Abatement Teams and about buy-busts and whether or not those are within the realm of what we like to do in San Francisco. How do you approach police oversight and making sure that people aren’t getting unnecessarily swept up?

GASCON: Well first of all, I think it’s helpful to put things into context. And if you look historically of where I’ve been, I’ve actually been a police reformer for many years. I worked very aggressively to turn around the LAPD after the Ramparts scandal. In fact, I was the one running training for the LAPD at the time and we actually went around working with members of the civil liberties community and the attorney general’s office and actually developed police training. We posted the Bill of Rights in every single classroom. More recently, when you look at the cases involving the Henry Hotel, where you have undercover police officers that were caught on video, allegedly violating people’s rights, I didn’t wait for anybody to tell me that I had to dismiss cases. We immediately dismissed over a hundred cases. So if you are an objective observer, and you look at all the things that I have done, including what I have done in the last 10 months and you would be not only supporting me, but you would see that I have taken very proactive, way above and beyond, to make sure that we have a clean trial process.

TREFNY: That’s current District Attorney George Gascon, who was formerly San Francisco’s police chief. He’s explaining why he doesn’t think there’s an inherent conflict of interest when a police chief becomes DA. This is Crosscurrents, and I’m Ben Trefny here with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta. Rina, there’s another obvious concern about someone like Gascon becoming DA. And that’s that he doesn’t really have any experience as a prosecutor.

PALTA: That’s right. Gascon argues that he’s worked with attorneys and supervised attorneys throughout his career and has what is certainly a ton of experience evaluating and putting together cases. But, no, he has never worked as a prosecutor, and that could be a concern to some voters. It’s also the case that there are really only two people in this race who’ve worked as prosecutors, Bock being one of them – and only one as a prosecutor in San Francisco, and that’s Bill Fazio. Fazio is pretty incredulous that there are only two candidates in the race who have worked as prosecutors. He’s run before for DA, actually this will be his fourth try. But he says he entered the race because the other candidates, to him, are so lacking.

TREFNY: Let’s hear from Fazio now.

BILL FAZIO: Unfortunately there’s not a lot of training, there’s little enthusiasm, there’s no creativity in that office when you have a leader who’s never been in a courtroom before. Who has never practiced law. Who is a former police chief. He may have done fine in that capacity, but in my opinion, frankly, he has no business being the chief prosecutor. Ms. Bock has experience, thank God. Mr. Onek has absolutely no experience, and I’ve been with him, he’s a nice young man, he’s a professor of law. But he’s up in his ivory tower; he’s never stepped down into the dirt and grit of the city of San Francisco. He doesn’t work in San Francisco. Mr. Vu has been a defense attorney in Orange County. I dare say since he’s only lived here since April he doesn’t have a real handle on things. So all things being equal, I think I bring to the table what all the other candidates ostensibly bring.

If you look at Gascon, he’s got a background in law enforcement. I’ve been in law enforcement in one capacity or another for 35 years. Ms. Bock is an actual prosecutor, I have more prosecutorial experience than she has and all of mine is local here in San Francisco. Mr. Onek has progressive ideas; he’s been opposed to the death penalty from the very beginning whereas some of the other candidates have changed their position. I’ve been opposed to the death penalty for the last 15 years and have publicly stated I would never seek the death penalty in San Francisco. And Mr. Trinh is a defense attorney and I, too am a defense attorney at this point in time. So I’d like to think that even if someone were committed to one of the other candidates that I would be a very good and appropriate second choice in this ranked choice voting that we have here in San Francisco.

PALTA (To Bill Fazio): So if you won the election and became DA, what are some of the first policies you would implement?

FAZIO: Well, I would underscore the importance of juvenile justice, which has always been ignored. I’ve worked as a prosecutor and a defense attorney at so-called “juvie” here in San Francisco. It’s physically separated from the office and the people who work there are separated in spirit as well. It’s never been given high priority. I would make that a high priority in my office because it’s the one area where we can identify people who really don’t belong in the system and get them out of the system.

TREFNY: That was DA candidate Bill Fazio, speaking with KALW’s Rina Palta, who now joins me in the studio to talk about the San Francisco district attorney’s race. So we’re down to our final candidate.

PALTA: We are. And that’s Vu Trinh, who I’ve saved for last because he’s a bit of an outlier in this race. And that’s largely because Trinh, who until recently was a public defender in Orange County, doesn’t actually believe in the politics surrounding this race. Here’s what he says about the fact that district attorneys are elected at all.

VU TRINH: I’ve seen that this politicization of the criminal justice system has done a real disservice to the entire justice system, where we see a lot of injustices when prosecutors are more concerned with their conviction rate than doing justice and doing what’s right. One of my primary goals is to depoliticize that office, from the investigative unit, to the men and women who serve as prosecutors in that office.

TREFNY: So Trinh is running for DA despite not really liking the fact that it’s a political office he’s running for. What kinds of things would he do if elected?

PALTA: Well, one of his ideas is to digitize everything in the court system, which is a more revolutionary idea than one would think, because the criminal justice system, I’m pretty sure, will be the last market for paper products on the planet.

TREFNY: That and journalism.

PALTA: Yeah. And he also has a plan that would basically allow anyone to set up a surveillance camera on their property and hook it into a police network. Here’s how Trinh explains that plan.

TRINH: When something actually occurred in the areas where there is surveillance, we can use that to accurately identify the perpetrator. Because the way we’re doing things and investigating now is very archaic. It’s the same type of investigative process that has been used for centuries. We really need to move that along because we have an interest in protecting the innocent. And I can assure you, I’ll bet you 25 percent or even higher of people that are caught up in the criminal justice system due to eye witness identification is being wrapped up in a case where they’re clearly innocent of the crime.

TREFNY: That’s San Francisco DA candidate Vu Trihn, explaining one of his outside-the-box ideas. This is Crosscurrents. We’re discussing the San Francisco race for district attorney with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta. One of the benefits of having such a crowded race, Rina, must be having so many unique and interesting ideas floating around.

PALTA: Definitely. There’s no question that having this race be a competitive one, which hasn’t happened in almost a decade, is shaking things up a bit and also offering a kind of referendum on how the voters feel about our criminal justice system. Do they want an insider or an outsider? A reformist or an experienced professional? All of the candidates are coming to the race with different things to offer. I’d say the main drawback of this being a ranked choice election is that the candidates, by virtue of the system, are really required to be a bit guarded about the specifics of what they’d do in office, and more inclined to band together on the surface and fight for those second and third place votes.

TREFNY: Behind George Gascon at this point, who’s probably polling ahead as the incumbent.

PALTA: Exactly.

TREFNY: Thanks a lot, Rina.

PALTA: Thank you.

The polls are already open for those who’d like to vote early, but election day is November 8.

This morning, outside San Francisco’s City Hall, a campaign launched to gather enough signatures to place an initiative on the ballot in November 2012 that would replace the death penalty with life without parole.

This coming week SAFE California (“Savings, Accountability, and Full Enforcement for California Act”) will tour San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego to gather signatures and inform people about the price justice and the community pay for the death penalty.

Among the speakers were law enforcement leaders, families of victims, and exonerated persons. One of them was Lorrain Taylor whose two sons, Albade and Obadiah, were gunned down in 2000 at the age of 22. In the clip above, Lorrain talks about why she is signing the petition.

In the University of California system, officials are considering raising fees as much as 16% a year through 2015. To hear more about what this means for students, and for public education in California, KALW’s Holly Kernan spoke with UC’s student liaison to the Regents, Jonathan Stein. Stein is a graduate student in public policy and law at UC Berkeley, and he’s one of two students represented in the University’s decision-making body.

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HOLLY KERNAN: How did we get to where we are now?

JONATHAN STEIN: People make the point a lot that this state has put us in this position, and to a very significant extent they’re correct. The budget crisis that the UC is in today is not just the product of a short-term economic recession that is affecting the state budget. It’s actually the product of a long-term divestment from the state of California exacerbated by a short-term economic recession.

I mean, if you look at some of the numbers… In 1985, so two and a half decades ago, corrections in the UC and the state of California were both about 6% of the budget. Today corrections are about 12% – so they’ve doubled. And the UC is about 3%, so it’s been cut in half. In real terms, what that means is that two decades ago the state of California was the number one contributor to the UC system, and today [the state] is behind student fees. And so you could make a very real argument that the state UC system is itself in a position where they need to privatize.

So the Regents are put in this very difficult position where they have to make choices in a difficult financial environment and they’re saying, “Okay, we refuse to compromise in the quality of the university. We refuse to increase the student to faculty ratio. We refuse to increase the number of tenure track faculty. We don’t want to cut staff or services. And in the absence of state funding, how are we supposed to pay for all of that?” And their answer time and again is student fees.

STEIN: Right, except that the most rosy estimate to how much we can raise through corporate fundraising is somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million a year, which is not necessarily a drop in the bucket in terms of the UC budget, but it’s not much more than a handful of drops in the bucket. So student fees at this point have really become the primary way that the UC finances itself and fills its budget holes.

KERNAN: Yes, but another fee hike is being proposed right now and I believe that Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, formally San Francisco mayor, is saying, “No, let’s not do a tuition hike. Let’s look for other ways to continue along this privatization line.”

STEIN: Yeah, so at the last Regents meeting, for example, the UCOP – which is the University of California Office of the President – who are the administrators in charge of running this system, came to the Regents with the proposal that they were… the Regents were in a considerance of temper and will vote on down the line in which fees went up anywhere from 0-16% and the actual amount made up would be determined by the amount the state put in. So if the state gives us 8%, student fees go up by 8%. If the state gives us 0%, student fees go up by 16%. The UCOP was determining it an eight-and-eight plan and immediately students said, “No, this is a 16-and-zero plan. Let’s be honest. The state government is not going to be in a position to increase our funding in any substantial way anytime in the future.”

So this we see as a recipe for increasing fees 16% every year for a number of years and that would take student fees. I have the numbers in front of me, from the current $13,000 which is a dramatic increase from just a couple of years ago, to just four years down the line from now: $22,000 a student. And you could make a very serious argument… In fact I think it’s inescapable that the UC will have completely lost its role as a leader in access and affordability nationwide and public higher education.

KERNAN: That’s a big issue in terms of access in terms of the 1960 master plan for education in California. What do you think these rising costs mean to this public education system?

STEIN: It means that the doors to public higher education in California will begin to close in the middle class. The low-income students get a reasonable amount of aid when you combine Pell grants, Cal grants and then university aid. We do a relatively good job in the UC system actually in giving gift aid to students in really low-income families. And students coming from high-income families can continue to afford the UC because it’s still much cheaper than private schools.

But the students that are going to be priced out of the UC if we continue on this path are students from middle-income families, and the middle-income family, you know – we’re not talking about a family making $60,000, we’re talking about a family where one parent is a teacher and the other parent is a landscaper or a fireman or something. Both parents can be making $60,000 or $70,000. And you’re talking about a family that together makes over $100,000. And yet, it still is incredibly difficult to send a student to school when that costs $15,000 every year. Plus you have to add on of course the cost of living in a city like Berkeley or Los Angeles or San Diego where the cost of living is high. So the total cost of going to the UC for a year can be $30,000-50,000. If you’re from a middle-income family and even if you’re making over $100,000, education access has become increasingly difficult

KERNAN: Jonathan you don’t get voting power until next year. Is it frustrating for you to be at these meetings and not have voting power?

STEIN: It can be, yeah. More frustrating I think is the fact that students only have one vote total. Students now put in more money to the UC system than the state of California and yet on the entire Board of Regents there is one voting student member. Meanwhile there are five or six ex-oficio members of the Board of Regents, that is the governor, the lieutenant governor, the superintendent of schools, and other elected officials. Then I believe 16 members appointed for 12-year terms by the governor of California. So the vast majority of the board has some connection to state government.

KERNAN: And you have said that this position is probably more important than ever before in history. How are you talking across these lines of the Regents and communicating to students about what’s happening.

STEIN: Well at times it’s really difficult because you have to maintain your credibility in the eyes of two very different groups. So you have to sometimes do what is in the best interest of the university, and the Regents will only take you seriously if you do that. At the same time you are nothing in this position unless the students back you up on things. You simply have no power as one voice to go to the Board of Regents and to the chancellors and to the administration – all the centers of power within the system – and say, “I personally believe we ought to do this differently.” No one is going to listen to you if that’s the case; you have to have a coalition of students behind you who are pushing towards the same thing. And in order to have that coalition behind you students have to know that you’re a credible advocate for them.

KERNAN: So how do we solve the system’s problems?

STEIN: I think the state of California simply needs more revenues. I mean, look at this: The UC system this year received just over $2 billion from the state of California. That’s in a budget of $80 billion, so it really looks like the state of California has de-prioritized the UC system and I argue that it has.

But there are two ways that we can tackle that problem. One is re-prioritizing the UC, which I am a fervent advocate of. At the same time, we simply need to grow the pot of money with which state government can make choices and can invest in public priorities.

You know, if you take out all of the entitlement spending in the state budget, if you take out K-14, which is K-12 plus community colleges, and that’s 40% of the general fund as required by Prop 98, you take out servicing the debt and other mandatory expenses, and all you’re left with in the California general fund, really, is criminal justice, health and human services, and higher ed. And so, every time I go to legislators and I lobby on behalf of more money for the UC system, they’re saying, “Well okay, do you want me to take money away from single moms, who need programs to provide healthcare for their kids? To provide free lunches for low-income students? Do you want me to cut services to the disabled or the elderly?” And my answer is of course is, “No. It isn’t. I would never advocate for those things.”

What we really need to do is we need to find a way to put the state on some kind of long-term, sustainable funding model – a system of public finance that actually allows us to invest in public priorities the way that California used to do when it was a nationwide leader in big, bold policy experiments. And today, we’re simply… We have a broken state government that can’t fund anything.

KERNAN: You have a seat at the table of these very important meetings. What does it look like? What is that meeting like?

STEIN: You’ve got a group of people who don’t tend to get to campus a lot, don’t spend a lot of time with students, and are a long ways away from the time in their life where paying $13,000 for a year of school was a real pinch on their pocketbooks. And so, the student regent is responsible not just for saying, “Hey, students support the DREAM Act and students support and oil severance tax.” But more than that, on a deeper level, just articulating for folks who don’t run into students a lot how difficult it is to pay for an education in today’s California.

KERNAN: Is it hard for you to juggle school with that responsibility?

STEIN: Yeah, it is at times. But that’s okay because I see school really as a vehicle for involving myself in things that I’m passionate about and oftentimes those things are more outside the classroom than they are in. And I should say that I am certainly not the only one doing this. The student movement at the UC level and at the CSU level and at the CC level involves student leaders in a variety of different capacities all playing their role and all making sacrifices in order to do so. It’s sort of funny that you have to sacrifice a little piece of your education to fight for education, but it’s worth it.

KERNAN: And how has being a regent and having this seat at the table and having this responsibility changed the way that you see politics in California and the way you see yourself? How has it changed you?

STEIN: Well the hope is that it hasn’t changed me very much at all because the student regent is the one student position where you’re suddenly invited to receptions and cocktail hours and you’re invited to dinners that you wouldn’t otherwise be invited to. And the hope is that all of the glitz and the glamour doesn’t blunt the energy with which you pursue the student position on things.

It’s difficult to say, in the middle of a conversation between three or four other people, “You know, Vice Chancellor, I really think it’s important that we talk about the implementation of the consultation and input policies for graduate professional degree fees.” You know, it’s sort of gauche to be pushing your agenda in a setting like that. And yet, settings like those are sometimes the only times that you have to make your point so you have to sort of be the fly in the ointment at times.

KERNAN: And you started to say “My view is that…”

STEIN: Oh my view of state government hasn’t really changed because I thought it was broken before I took this job and I think it’s broken now. One thing that has changed in this role, though, is my perspective of state legislators. I did a lot of lobbying and advocacy on behalf of students before I got this job and I went on a number of lobby visits with legislators and legislative staff and all of them say, to the last man or woman, “We’re advocates for higher education, we’re champions for higher education, we believe in higher education, we went to a UC, our children go to UC’s, blah blah blah.” And then they turn around and they pass a budget that cuts the UC system $650 million as is the case in this last budget cycle. And it took me some time in this job to realize that we were getting snowed a little bit — that it was just a really, really effective sales job. And that all those people who told me that they were advocates for the UC system, who then would vote for the increased pay for prison guards and then cut the UC by hundreds of millions of dollars, had fooled me a little bit. And I’m not fooled anymore.

KERNAN: So let me ask you this. What is different about California’s system? What’s at stake here?

STEIN: Fully 40% of students in the UC system receive Pell grants. You compare that to privates: USC, 16%; MIT, 15%; Harvard, 7%… I mean when people say that we’re in danger of limiting the quality of this institution if we make further cuts, my response is “Yes we are.” And that’s unfortunate.

At the same time, we’re also on the verge of compromising access and affordability and while we’re in a really impressive university because of our Nobel prizes and because of the amazing research we do, we’re a really unique university because of the community of students that we educate – because of this unique population, from diverse and varied backgrounds, from all over the socio-economic spectrum. And to compromise that, in my mind, would be just as much of a tragedy as compromising our research excellence or our Nobel prizes or what have you.

What are your solutions to the budget crisis facing California colleges? Let us know on our Facebook page.

If you take a look at the list of contributors to the San Francisco-based novel, No Rest for the Dead, it reads like a mystery writers’ hall of fame: Jeffrey Deaver, Diana Gabaldon, John Lescoart, Faye Kellerman, R.L. Stine, Alexander McCall Smith, Kathy Reichs, Michael Palmer…

All of these writers were invited by Andrew Gulli, managing editor for The Strand, a mystery magazine based in Michigan, to collaboratively write a murder mystery. And, there’s a twist to this murder mystery – it just might save lives. Reporter Max Pringle investigates.

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“There is always that case, the one that keeps me awake at night, the one that got away. It’ll always be there, gnawing at the edges of my mind. It doesn’t matter that 10 years have passed, it doesn’t matter that the case is officially closed. An innocent woman was executed, I was the one who helped make it happen…”

MAX PRINGLE: These are the words excerpted from the diary of former San Francisco Police Detective Jon Nunn – a fictional former detective, that is. Nunn’s a character in No Rest for the Dead. The author of this particular section is Andrew Gulli. But he didn’t write the whole book – not even close.

ANDREW GULLI: I would say in the history of publishing there’s never been a serial novel with this many best-selling authors.

Twenty-six, to be exact, ranging from R.L. Stine to Jeffery Deaver. Stine is known for his popular Goosebumps series of children’s novels, while Deaver is famous for his nail-biting thrillers, the most recent being a James Bond reboot.

GULLI: It’s a sort of a relay race: You have to pass the baton smoothly and you can’t make it impossible for the other person to race ahead with their chapter.

Gulli may not have written every word, but he did pull the whole thing together. It took him four months and a lot of arm twisting – that is, coordinating. Author T. Jefferson Parker, reached at a hotel in Atlantic City while on tour, describes says the process was very collaborative.

T. JEFFERSON PARKER: They inspired me and guided me and also gave me the freedom to add some of my own “T. Jefferson Parkerness” to it.

Parker and fellow author and friend John Lescroart stayed in email and phone contact throughout the project and built on each other’s ideas.

PARKER: It was really kind of fun once I got going.

Very briefly, here’s the novel’s plot – told with some help from four of its authors.

GULLI: It’s a philandering husband who is found completely decayed in an Iron Maiden in Berlin.

Rosemary is tried and executed for the murder. But 10 years later, doubts begin to emerge. So Nunn hatches a plan…

JOHN LESCROART: …Kind of calls everyone back together for a memorial of the execution date.

Nunn’s life has unraveled because of the guilt over his role in Rosemary’s execution. He’s lost his job, his marriage, and he’s turned to drink.

JEFFERY DEAVER: The flawed cowboy who’s done something maybe he shouldn’t have done a long time ago, but he’s essentially a stand up guy.

And through some clever sleuthing, he begins to piece together what actually happened.

DEAVER: Nobody’s going to get anything over on him.

“I knew those scumbags would all come out to mark the occasion. They’d have to. Snakes can’t hide under rocks all their lives. To give the appearance of having nothing to hide, they’d all be there; that’s what I was counting on.”

Without giving too much away, let’s just say that some of the suspects go to great lengths to stop Nunn from uncovering the truth.

LESCROART: This is an amazing ending. It’s a cool, unexpected, really good ending.

GULLI: This has to be like a finely tuned orchestra. And it was not easy, but at the end of the day it all just ended up working out.

I met up with John Lescroart in an East Bay coffee shop to talk about the writing process. He agreed to write a few chapters as a favor to Gulli, who’s a friend. But he insisted that those chapters come towards the beginning of the novel.

LESCROART: …Because I find that the earlier you show up in one of these kind of books, the more options you have and everybody else can kind of follow your lead. You can set the bar in terms of how high or how low it’s going to be.

But, Lescroart says once he saw the lineup of talent assembled for the project, almost all his doubts fell away. And he wasn’t disappointed.

LESCROART: …Because when I went through and read this book it shocked me how it came across as tremendously cool and different voices, but really the overriding work hung together as one novel.

It also didn’t hurt that he got to set the story where he sets most of his novels: San Francisco.

LESCROART: …One of the terrific places to set any kind of a mystery, A.) because it’s small enough that really everybody does know everybody else, and B.) because it’s big enough that you can have real secrets and a real mystery, and C, D, E, and F? You’ve got the crazy politics, the crazy weather, the vast disparity in income classes.

And then there’s the city’s unique atmospherics, which make it an ideal setting for a mystery.

“For a long moment, cocooned in the warmth of his Lexus, Ballard simply sat behind the wheel and let the motor run, watching the mist settle on the windshield, almost as if it were actually raining. But there was no real rain, only the damned perennial fog. On the dashboard, he noted the external temperature – 43 degrees – and shook his head with disgust. The first day of summer. Ridiculous.”

By this point, you might think you’ve heard the whole story of No Rest for the Dead. But you haven’t. As with any good mystery, this one’s got a little twist.

Not just any project would get all these writers to work together. This one was for a good cause. All the proceeds from sales of No Rest for the Dead will benefit the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society. And so it happens that a suspense story about death might end up helping save lives.

For Crosscurrents, I’m Max Pringle.

This story included the voice of David LaTulippe. No Rest for the Dead is on bookshelves now from Touchstone Books.

In local artist Brett Amory’s “Waiting” series of paintings, isolated figures inhabit washed out, spare landscapes—solitary people waiting at bus stops and crosswalks, on BART platforms or at the airport. It’s an ongoing series, focused on th… …

This weekend, an important bill will go into effect in the state of California. It’s called AB 109, but most people know it as “realignment.” It was crafted as a response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling back in May, which ordered the state to drastically reduce its prison population by as many as 40,000 inmates. What lawmakers came up with is an idea that’s been floating around the criminal justice world for some time: moving the least dangerous inmates back to the communities they came from.

KALW News’ criminal justice editor, Rina Palta, has been covering prison overcrowding, and the realignment solution. She joined Ben Trefny to discuss how realignment is going to be implemented throughout the state.

* * *

BEN TREFNY: So, Rina, prisons will stop accepting these less dangerous criminals and they’ll be kept in county jails. Are they ready for that?

RINA PALTA: There’s a little panic in the air in some counties. Los Angeles, for example, isn’t looking forward to handling 10,000 new felony offenders per year. Officials from some of the other southern counties, which are traditionally a little more “tough on crime” and, therefore, have a lot of people coming back, have expressed anger over the shift. But here in the Bay Area, there’s a lot of support for the policy. Wendy Still, San Francisco’s Chief Probation Officer, worked for years in the state prison system at a high level, and had this to say about realignment:

WENDY STILL: It’s the right thing to do. There are 47,000 inmates that cycle in and out of prison and spend less than 90 days. And having spent so many decades working in that system, it’s a waste of money and it doesn’t provide any type of meaningful intervention to actually change lives.

TREFNY: Rina, how does realignment address this cycle in and out of prison that Chief Still is talking about?

PALTA: One of the major ways is that now offenders won’t be sent back to prison for parole violations. Most people have probably heard by now that California’s recidivism rate is about 66% – that means two out of three people who leave prison go back within three years. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve been convicted of a new crime. Over half of the offenders who return to prison do so because of a parole violation, according to a study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2009.

TREFNY: And what exactly constitutes a parole violation?

PALTA: Currently, nearly everyone who leaves prison basically has to sign a contract, usually for three years, that says they’ll report to a parole officer and abide by certain restrictions, like taking drug tests or showing up for meetings, and it states that law enforcement doesn’t need a warrant to search their house. But if you break that contract at all, your parole officer can send you back to prison. Also, if law enforcement thinks that you’ve committed a new crime, but they don’t have the resources or enough proof to charge you with that crime, there’s a mechanism for sending you back to prison on a parole violation instead. That requires less proof, but also results in up to a year in prison, often less.

There’s been a slow drawdown over the past couple of years in issuing parole violations, but realignment takes it much further and says to counties: First of all, you’re responsible now for supervising nonviolent people getting out of prison, and if any of those people commit a violation, they’ll have to serve time for that violation in a county jail – or even better, counties find another sort of punishment besides putting violators in jail for 90 days. So where you’ve had something like 5,000 per month of these parole violators going to prison in the past, that’s no longer going to happen.

TREFNY: So, you said that counties might find other sorts of punishment besides putting violators in jail for 90 days. What’s another punishment that they might put forth?

PALTA: There’s something called “flash incarceration,” which is just a few days, sticking someone in jail for a few days.

TREFNY: A sort of shock treatment, in a way?

PALTA: Exactly. It’s kind of like, you have to obey these rules, but we’re not going to disrupt your life and make it so you can’t go to your job or pick up your kids. We’re going to make this short and sweet, just so you get the message. There’s also house arrest issues, there’s ankle monitoring; there are all kinds of things you can do.

TREFNY: So if they end up incarcerating them, do the county jails have space to handle a lot of new parole violators?

PALTA: That’s really the 500-million-dollar question. That’s about how much money the state is giving the counties in the first nine months of realignment to handle these parolees and the new low-level offenders they’ll be absorbing. And pretty much anyone will tell you, that’s not enough money.

TREFNY: So what happens then, when the $500 million runs out? Will counties just be forced to let people out?

PALTA: Kind of. For the average citizen, one of the biggest questions going into realignment has been: What’s different about keeping someone in jail for a crime instead of prison, or having the county supervise someone instead of the state? Well, if counties lock people up for their full sentences and don’t do anything differently from what the state has been doing, then there won’t be much of a difference, and we may continue to deal with these high rates of recidivism and overcrowding. I asked Matt Cate, the secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation about that and here’s what he said:

MATT CATE: There’s no question. If the county tries to emulate the state, if the community corrections partnership sits down and says, “You know what? Let’s take the money and re-create the state system exactly as the state runs it.” Number one, there’s not enough money to do that. And number two, I think we’ve demonstrated that’s really not the right approach. We finally know in California that you’ve got to combine the tough on crime law enforcement with a heavy dose of treatment if you want to reduce recidivism.

PALTA: What Cate is saying is that without sufficient funds, counties will have to come up with other ways of handling these low-level offenders, besides locking them up, or they’re going to have to come up their own cash to keep them in jail.

But people should know that realignment will not lead to felons getting released to the streets. If anyone is released, it’s more likely that it will be people who are in jail now – who’ve committed misdemeanors, or are awaiting trial. Either they’ll be let out early or put in community programs or on house arrest. You know, over 70% of people in jail in California are not serving time for a crime – they’re awaiting trial and they’re in jail, many of them, because they couldn’t afford bail.

But the other money question is if there’s even enough funding coming in to adequately beef up these alternative programs, like drug programs, and house arrests, and ankle monitoring. The answer may be no.

TREFNY: And what about public safety? If fewer people are locked up, that also means offenders are likely to face less time behind bars. So, there is this fear that this will result in a hike in crime.

PALTA: Certainly, there are many people who believe crime will go up, at least at first, before the system has time to even out and get rehabilitation programs into gear. But down the line, the hope is that counties will do a better job than the state at keeping people from re-offending. And Secretary Cate from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says this is the best option when you consider the alternative.

CATE: Well, let’s keep in mind that absent realignment, we’d be releasing 35,000 prisoners onto the streets in the next two years. No one wants to talk about that option because obviously that’s a disaster for public safety. So when I hear someone saying, “Oh my gosh, I might have to release a low-level pre-trial detainee?” Well that’s a much better option than a wholesale release of state prisoners under the three-judge panel decision and the Supreme Court’s decision.

PALTA: So Cate’s point is that something needs to be done to get California in compliance with the Constitution, and they’re hoping this is the best way to do it.

Read more about prison realignment at our criminal justice blog the Informant.

The results of a California case headed to the Supreme Court may have a bearing on one of the Bay Area’s most publicized murder cases. U.S. v. Jones asks whether it is legal to place a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s car without a warrant, as wa… …

San Franciscans will see a fierce competition come to a head in less than two months. There are 16 contenders in the race to be San Francisco’s next mayor, and here at KALW News, we’re talking to all of them.

But one candidate that might be familiar to some San Franciscans is former supervisor Bevan Dufty. Dufty served for eight years representing District 8, which includes the Castro, Twin Peaks, and Glen Park. If elected, he would be the city’s first openly gay mayor.

KALW’s Ben Trefny sat down with Dufty in the KALW studios and asked him to start off by talking about his neighborhood.

* * *

BEVAN DUFTY: I’m Bevan Dufty. I was a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for eight years, and I’m one of 16 candidates for mayor in the 2011 election. I am lucky to live in the Lower Haight, and I can walk within two blocks and touch five different streetcars, which is super cool.

BEN TREFNY: The Lower Haight is one neighborhood in San Francisco that is actually a pretty ethnically diverse population. That’s been changing a little bit with the Western Addition and that sort of thing; there’s been gentrification of the Western Addition. Tell me your impressions of that and that aspect of that neighborhood.

DUFTY: I see myself as a candidate for mayor who’s running with a black agenda. I say, you don’t have to be black to have a black agenda. But our African American community is in crisis in San Francisco. Everybody running for mayor can tell you that we’re at 4% in the Census and there’s been an out-migration task force.

But in my opinion you need a mayor that every day is working to empower and make healthy a community that’s really been neglected and marginalized. We’ve probably lost more African American businesses in the last decade than in our city’s history. And sometimes people are leaving for valid reasons. There are certainly middle-class black families that are moving out to the suburbs for bigger homes, safe neighborhoods, and better schools. And so it’s a combination of factors that has brought this about.

But I think it’s a huge issue. I grew up in a black community; I grew up near Harlem. My mom worked in the Civil Rights Movement. My godmother was Billie Holiday. I worked for Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to serve in Congress. And I worked for mayor Willie Brown. But I can tell you, having grown up in New York, lived in Washington DC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, we have no black middle class and we have the weakest black community anywhere. There are only five African American elected officials in San Francisco. And guess what, three of them have endorsed me and I’m proud of that.

TREFNY: So what do you do to retain or bring back the black population?

DUFTY: Well, a couple of things. First, you focus on businesses. I think that we have to have a two-pronged strategy. From the public sector, it’s difficult. There’ve been a lot of court decisions that have complicated minority business contracting. When I worked on Capitol Hill in the ‘70s, we started with a 10% set aside in a number of federal programs. It was fairly straightforward.

Now, it’s much more nuanced and complex. With local business ordinances, minority and women business ordinances, disadvantaged business ordinances, what you’re finding oftentimes in the public sector is that black firms and other minority firms are put into teams in order to meet goals that are established for minority business participation. But guess what: The prime wins that contract, and a black firm that might have 10% of the job gets a scope-of-work change where you negotiate with the city agency. And all of a sudden you go from 10% to 2% and your work doesn’t start until the third year of the contract.

What are you doing? You’re laying people off; your business isn’t really sustainable. So I feel that from the mayor’s office, we have to be looking at everything major that we’re doing. Whether it’s Lennar, whether it’s high speed rail, whether it’s America’s Cup, we’ve got to be looking for opportunities because those black-owned businesses are the most likely to hire, mentor, and elevate people who are African American working with them.

TREFNY: So you talked about trying to represent the interests of people who are leaving San Francisco. One other group that’s doing that is families. There’s a well-documented loss of families in San Francisco. You yourself are a father and your daughter is now going to a public school in San Francisco. I’d like to hear what you think is the problem in San Francisco that is causing families to leave? And what are you going to do about it?

DUFTY: We have a contract with the school system and during my time on the Board of Supervisors, I chaired the City and School District Committee. It was a committee that hadn’t met for a couple of years because it had become kind of a battleground where city supervisors would question and browbeat school district staff about different issues. And I said, let’s start over. Let’s think about how the city should be partnering with the school district. Let’s think about: How are we providing Muni services? How are we providing mental health services?

What we realize is, there’s a reason San Francisco has the highest percentage of non-public students of any major city in this country. That’s because the private, non-public schools have been really good at giving parents certainty, advanced knowledge of where their kid’s going to go, and are just really much competitive than we are in this city.

We changed this past year how school admissions are done. Fifty percent of it is now based on your neighborhood school, and 20% of the city is what’s called a CTIP, a Census Track Integration Plot, which means that you live in a neighborhood with a lower performing school, and you can get a preference to go to a neighborhood school that you may feel better about. So, I think the thing that we’ve got to do is create a success plan for each of our schools: our elementary, middle, and high schools.

A lot of it right now is around language immersion. If you see the schools that are rising, you look at Star King, for example, you look at Fairmont – these are schools that have language immersion programs. I think the studies have shown that if you want young children to be introduced to thinking in a bilingual manner, and being taught in that manner, it’s like brain food. It just percolates their thought process and their brain development and it’s very important.

TREFNY: What is another one of your top priorities that you would focus on as mayor?

DUFTY: Well, I’ve talked about a black agenda, so that’s very important to me, but I’m going to flip the script and tell you that as an 18-year city employee and someone who’s worked in public service all my life, I’m a believer that city government can be dynamic. I believe that we can be as competitive and creative as the Googles or the 10-person startups that explode that we all know about within a year or two.

I love the people that work for the city. As much as there is an anti-public employee sentiment, let me tell you, I can tell you by name the people that chase the stray dogs, that operate the 29 bus, that write the parking tickets, that work in the libraries, and that, sadly, I’ve met in the emergency rooms when I’ve had to see constituents who’ve been stabbed or shot. I know the people who work in this city. And they are great people.

What they need is a mayor that is not a straight-up politician. A mayor that is not trying to go somewhere, a mayor that is not going to tell you that the solutions to our problems lie outside our borders, and that’s why they bring in department head after department head from other parts of the country to come here, and guess what they find when they get here? They have to get their spouse a job, they have to get their kids in school, they have to find a house in this very expensive housing market, and then what do you get? You get a commission, anywhere from five to 11 people, you get 11 of us wild ones on the Board of Supervisors, you get a mayor, and you get tons of advocacy groups. And over and over again, I’ve seen people fail because they don’t understand San Francisco. Yes, we’re a process city, but we can work through that process if you have trust with people and know how to develop policy from a bottom-up basis and not drop it down like manna from heaven.

Listen to the full interview with mayoral candidate Bevan Dufty, and find all of the mayoral candidate interviews here.

California Republicans are trying to give a Texas doctor’s presidential campaign a healthy boost. Congressman Ron Paul won the state’s Republican Straw Poll over the weekend in Los Angeles…

On the other side of the political divide, President Obama wants to slash $3 trillion from the federal deficit, and he wants to do it according to what he’s calling the ‘Buffett Rule.’ the plan, named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett would raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires, whom Buffett contends can afford to pay a higher share of taxes…

The President’s plan may be contentious in the Marin County town of Ross, which ranks 20th on the most recent Forbes list of so-called ‘millionaire capitals’…

Not everyone in our state is so fortunate. High rates of unemployment and homelessness are two worsening symptoms of a troubled conomy. One side effect? More and more churchgoers are facing a spiritual dilemma as they head to Sunday services, passing panhandlers outside their houses of worship…

As the state passes the buck for the care of wayward parolees to local governments, California counties are grappling with how to handle the new responsibility…

Some people in Sacramento are taking a stand against the violent crime of sex trafficking. Protesters packed Sacramento’s downtown area over the weekend in an effort to shed light on the problem…

Another group of activists has reason to feel good about their efforts. Environmentalists are pleased by new findings showing that the health of San Francisco Bay and its estuaries is improving, although scientists are not yet ready to proclaim waterway and habitat restoration a total success.